OK, Ben, moOOOvie time - maybe. I’ve got two movies, but how do I upload them? The only upload button I found here is for static photos.
Upload to a video hosting site, then post the link…
OK, I found a place to park videos, so here we go:
Sequence, 1st video: (1) In Dolphin’s folder pane, when moving the mouse up & down there is no highlight tracking the cursor. (2) On the Tab-bar I pick a tab, and then move the mouse uup & down, hunting for files. Highlighting flashes across each row as the cursor passes over it. (3) I then select several files Ctrl-click. All are equally selected, but oddly they are in two shades of green (one darker if the mouse is hovering over it). (4) Moving the mouse up & down while some files are selected (hunting for more files), there is a lot of flashing going on with shades of greys and greens as the cursor passes over different rows. (5) Right-clicking over one of the selected files, a context menu for the selected ones appears (of course). (6) A final pass over the left pane; no tracking highlight there. Demonstration in Dolphin
Sequensce, 2nd video: This is Directory Opus on my computer at work (Windows, not that it matters). The same sequence is followed as above. There is no highlight tracking the cursor in either the left pane or the file list, and not even if a bunch of files are selected. All of the selected files are always the same shade of green, which is good visual guidance because they are all equally selected. Demonstration in Dopus
This comparison demonstrates that, for Dolphin users who don’t want it, all the flashing is unnecessary distraction and it would be a good and reasonable option to be able to easilty turn off that feature. The flashy highlighting could be the installation default.
I hope so - those videos served mostly to show me how much more attractive Dolphin looks and feels compared to the other monstrosity that looked a bit like a 1980s Windows effort 
Well, this isn’t about the decorations anyway, but the highlighting that tracks the cursor. And actually I find what seems antiquated to you to be a very productive work environment for me, at work. And Dolphin/Plasma is a good environment as well, but I think would profit from improvement with the option I have described in this thread.
Thanks for your help, views and discussion here!
But from the first video, at least, do you understand now what I am trying to do and the option I think would be good for the wishlist?
I noticed that the brighter background on the item during mousedown while clicking an item contributes significantly to my own perception of a ‘flashing’ effect while selecting items.
Same effect can be seen when clicking/mousedown on the list of items in Window Management → Desktop Effects; noticed this when scrubbing around looking for any option that affects this momentary brightening of the item being clicked. Alas, I was not thus far successful.
the grey flashing you see in (2) is the focus highlight which is a darker version of your background color, so in this case grey.
this highlight tells you what is currently focused by your pointer and has nothing to do with selection (yet) but does indicate what WILL be selected if you hit ENTER or CLICK on it.
—
your light green color in (3) is you selection color and becomes the new background color for the focus highlight of (2)
—
the dark green flashing in (4) is again the focus highlighting as you pass over the selection highlighting so it makes for a darker version of the green just like it makes for a darker version of the white background everywhere else in the frame.
so if you want to reduce the flashing you can choose a different theme or edit the colors of your focus and selection highlighting to suit you tastes, but since you seem to be using the windows version of dolphin, i don’t have any guidance for you on how to change your colors or themes in windows.
all i can say is it looks much less distracting on my default kubuntu install with the default breeze theme.
I am using Dolphin only in Linux (Fedora 44).
oh, my mistake then … it looks like windows 98.
try switching back to breeze and see if that’s not better.